Facebookers; your new Home

Take a tour of Facebook Home with us, as we guide you through its myriad nooks and crannies

Take a tour of Facebook Home with us as we guide you through its myriad nooks and crannies

Rumors of a Facebook phone have been bouncing off the virtual walls of the interwebs for a while, but the social networking juggernaut hasn’t really made significant inroads into branded devices. Its latest assault is an Android smartphone launched in cahoots with HTC, the First. This handset’s claim to fame is Facebook Home – a special home screen launcher that runs atop Android and attempts to, putting it crudely, make Facebook your home on the device.

And while the HTC First may not land in India anytime soon, you can still enter Facebook Home. It’s available as a free download from the Play Store, but until now only runs on an elite group of select devices: you get the keys to this home if you’re the lucky owner of a Samsung Galaxy S III, Note II, HTC One X or HTC One X+, and it will also open its doors to the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 as soon as they become officially available. Apart from the device, the only other prerequisite for Facebook Home is the latest versions of the Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps installed.

The three pillars of Facebook Home comprise Cover Feed, the app launcher, and Chat Heads. The latter functionality is, in fact, enabled by the latest version of Facebook Messenger, and you don’t need to install Home for it. When enabled, Chat Heads deliver your Facebook messages as bubbles that pop up over existing apps. Tapping a Chat Head displays the message thread, and you can send and receive messages from the same window with whatever app you were using still running in the background. This functionality can also be enabled for SMS messages using the appropriate setting in Facebook Messenger. If you receive messages from multiple contacts, the Chat Head bubbles get stacked on top of one another. However, their most interesting feature has to be the way these can be docked on the sides of your display. You can drag them around, let them stick on to the sides while carrying on with other activities on the phone. And if you want to get rid of them, just flick them towards the bottom of the screen.

Facebook Home, once installed and enabled via the Facebook app’s settings, essentially takes over your lock screen with Cover Feed – a gently moving slideshow of images and updates from your FB pals. You can double tap to “like” and/or comment on any of them directly from here, without even having to unlock your phone. Cover Feed also puts your Facebook notifications up front and center. Your own profile picture is displayed in a button towards the bottom, and swiping that towards the left gives you direct access to Messenger, swiping it right brings up the last-accessed app, and swiping it up takes you to the apps installed on your device. The primary, leftmost screen displays all your installed apps, while other screens on its right can be set up with your own app shortcuts. The tops of these shortcut screens offer a row of buttons that should be familiar to Facebook app users – Status, Photo and Check In – mimicking the same functionality of the app. However, these shortcut screens lack other basic features Android users are accustomed to, such as support for widgets or folders.

While Chat Heads are fun to use, Facebook Home isn’t really for everyone, (even those who use compatible smartphones), and is clearly meant for those who need their FB fix on a regular basis. For others, it’s still far from being the home Facebook intends it to be, lacking deep integration and customization features. All those are just a few updates away however, and till then, you can still use it as a temporary shelter on rainy days before you do, in fact, call it your home.